Hold On To The Dream
by Lysana
Summary: Sequel to Megan Whalen Turner's short story "The Nightmare". A magical bad dream is circulating through the human world. When a girl who doesn't deserve it gets it, she won't let it out of her hands to hurt anyone else. Now, she must fight to destroy it.


Chapter 1: Claiming the Problem

Kerrie walked along the row of booths at the school carnival, wondering if any of them were worth spending her tokens on. She really didn't need any little plastic trinkets, and she wasn't that good at tossing beanbags anyway. Still, there was no point in saving the tokens. They wouldn't be good anywhere but here, and she might as well use them.

A sign over one of the booths caught her attention. "Sodas 2 Tokens" was painted across it in large and slightly uneven letters. Kerrie decided that sounded better than wasting her tokens on a carnival game.

"I don't have to throw anything through a hoop to get a soda, do I?" she joked, walking up to the booth.

The teenaged boy running the booth didn't smile. He had purple shadows under his eyes, and Kerrie figured he probably spent too much time partying and maybe drinking when he ought be sleeping. "No, you just buy it," he said uninterestedly. "What'll you have?"

Kerrie smiled. "Oh, I don't care," she said, handing over a pair of tokens. "Whatever you've got is fine."

"Whatever I've got, huh?" the boy asked quickly. "Here you go, then!" He reached out and dropped some Jell-O in her hand where the tokens had been.

"Hey!" Kerrie looked down. There was nothing in her hand. She blinked. "Umm... never mind. But what about my soda?"

"Yeah, that," the kid said, and for no apparent reason he laughed. "Have a Dr. Pepper." He reached into a red-and-white cooler and pulled one out. Handing it to her, he added, "Have a nice day." He didn't look sincere.

"Weird..." Kerrie muttered to herself, walking away from the booth and opening her Dr. Pepper.

* * *

Walking home from the carnival, Kerrie stopped at the dime store to pick up a new comic book. As she flipped through the ones on the display rack, deciding which one to buy, she heard the cashier drumming her fingers on the counter in annoyance. Kerrie never damaged the comic books when she looked through them, though, so the cashier never said anything.

Kerrie picked out the latest issue of Superman: The All-New Adventures and paid for it, smiling at the grouchy cashier even though it was a waste of time. She walked back to her house with the comic book under her arm.

"Hi, Mom!" she called as she walked through the door, but it was her dad who answered.

"Mom had to work late tonight, so I'm making dinner," he said, popping his head out through the kitchen doorway and grinning. "Want to help me make Dad's Super Cheesy and Cliche Spaghetti?"

"Oh, Dad!" Kerrie said, laughing and setting her comic book down on the dining room table. "You know your spaghetti's not cliche!"

"Oh, but it is!" he protested. "All spaghetti made by dads is cliche. Besides, we both know it's cheesy, don't we?" He waved the bottle of Parmesan cheese he was holding.

Kerrie shook her head in amusement and opened the refrigerator. "I'll chop up the tomatoes, then," she said, and got them out of the fridge.

* * *

After dinner, Kerrie went up to her room to read about Superman's All-New Adventures. It was a pretty exciting issue, picking up where the last cliffhanger had left off, with the bad guys about to kill Superman's girlfriend again. He arrived just in time to rescue her from under their noses, then had several more pages of adventures before the comic ended with a scene of a shadowy figure sneaking up behind Superman with a glowing green piece of Kryptonite. Kerrie finished reading, put the comic book in a box with her other ones, and went to bed.

* * *

She was hanging over a vat of boiling acid, tied by a rope around her arms and torso to a giant pulley overhead. The villain gloated as he slowly worked a crank, lowering Kerrie towards the vat. "Help!" she screamed desperately, but it was no use. The villain just laughed, gesturing around at the glowing green walls of the room they were in.

"Superman can't possibly save you this time," he sneered, turning the crank again. Kerrie screamed again. She wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn't make herself look away from the bubbling acid. The toes of her sneakers finally touched the surface and started to dissolve.

"No," she said in terror, too frightened to scream anymore, and opened her eyes to see the ceiling of her bedroom. She lay there staring for several minutes, until the alarm clock went off and snapped her out of it.

"That's so weird," she said out loud, getting her clothes out of the closet for school. "I never get nightmares from reading Superman!"

* * *

The guy on Pine Street was waiting to hassle Kerrie again on her way home from school that day. "Hey, babe," he called out to her like he usually did. As usual, Kerrie ignored him and kept on walking. He followed her for a few blocks, like he always did, then turned and walked off when they got close to her house.

* * *

Kerrie finished her homework and put it in her book bag for tomorrow. Remembering her weird dream from the night before, she decided not to read any comic books that evening, and watched television instead.

It didn't help. She dreamed that a lot of huge, crawling snakes were trying to get into her room, slithering around behind the walls and tapping at the door and the windows. Looking out a window, she saw that each of the snakes was holding a mirror in its mouth. She got back into bed, shivering, and hoped the snakes wouldn't get in.

She woke up when the alarm clock went off, feeling tired and still thoroughly spooked. When she went to brush her teeth, the bathroom mirror showed faint purple smudges under her eyes.

"Of all the stupid nightmares!" Kerrie said, puzzled. "I'm not even afraid of snakes! And why mirrors?"

* * *

By the time she got to school, Kerrie had pretty much forgotten about her dream, even though she still felt a little tired. She messed up in science class, as usual, mixing up the names of the parts of a cell, and got called up to the blackboard to watch as the teacher carefully drew a diagram and labeled all the things she'd misnamed. The rest of the day went pretty well, though, and she was in a good mood when she got home, even after being followed by that Pine Street guy again.

That evening she had dinner at a friend's house. She got home fairly late, did her homework, and fell asleep trying to memorize the parts of a cell.

This time the snakes did get in. They crawled right into her bed and under the covers while she lay there, afraid to move. The snakes poked her with their mirrors, and kept on poking until she realized she was supposed to look in one. When she did, she saw herself standing by the blackboard in science class, being stared at by the other students who all thought it was terribly funny, and she felt the science teacher's despair at students who couldn't possibly remember the simplest things, no matter how many times you told them.

She looked away from the mirror, but the snakes poked her again and made her look, so she had to keep on watching herself at the blackboard and feeling the contempt of all those people who thought she was stupid.

* * *

"All right," Kerrie told herself the next morning, "three nightmares in three nights is too many!" But it wasn't all. She kept having the nightmares every night for the next two weeks, always having to spend the night watching herself through the eyes of anyone who had thought badly of her during the day.

Finally she decided that it couldn't possibly all be a coincidence. "Something's got to be causing these dreams," she said to herself, walking home from school and trying to ignore the Pine Street guy half a block behind her. "I just have to figure out what it is." She couldn't think of anything, though, and for the next three nights she dreamed about snakes and mirrors again.

* * *

"How's your day going?" a voice called out tauntingly at recess. Looking over, Kerrie saw a teenager lounging against the fence. He looked slightly familiar, and after a moment Kerrie recognized him as the guy from the soda booth at the carnival.

"Pretty okay so far," she called back. "How's the soda business?"

The kid laughed. "I don't sell soda no more," he said, coming over to sit uninvited on the grass next to Kerrie. "That was a one time deal." He gave her a knowing look, and Kerrie saw that the rings under his eyes had disappeared. "You haven't been sleeping too well, have you? You've got circles under your eyes."

"I'm fine, thanks." Kerrie shook her head, but the guy grinned at her. "Doubt it," he said smugly. "You've been having nightmares, haven't you? Snakes and mirrors, right?"

Kerrie looked at him, startled. "How would you know what kind of dreams I have?"

"Because I gave it to you, that's why," he said smugly. "I asked what kind of soda you wanted, and you said whatever I had was fine, so I gave you the nightmare."

"No way!" Kerrie said. "You can't just hand someone a nightmare!"

"You don't believe in magic, do you?" the guy asked. "That wasn't air I handed you, and it wasn't Jell-O either. So you'd better hope somebody asks _you_ for it, or else you'll be stuck with it for the rest of your life."

The teenager got up and wandered off, and Kerrie sat there thinking until the school buzzer rang and recess was over.

* * *

"I can't just give it to someone else," Kerrie said to herself as she walked home from school that afternoon. "Even if I gave it to someone who deserves it, they'd just hand it on to someone who doesn't. I have to find a way to destroy it instead."

* * *

The Pine Street guy was waiting for her again, and this time he stepped in front of her as she tried to pass.

"Listen to me, babe," the guy said. "I could show you a real good time. Wanna see?" He grabbed her by the shirt, but Kerrie pulled away. The guy laughed. "Why don't you just give me what you've got, sweetheart?" he said, leering unpleasantly.

"No, thanks," Kerrie said, closing her hand tightly at her side. "I'll keep it."

* * *

"Look, I'm really worried," Kerrie told the officer, but she could see that he wasn't really listening. "This guy keeps following me on the way home from school, and today he grabbed me and told me to 'give him what I have.' I'm afraid he's going to rape me or something."

"Nah, don't worry about it, kid," the cop said boredly. "Nobody gets raped around here, especially not a little girl."

That night she dreamed about how she was a slut only good for one thing, and a little girl who just wanted attention and wasn't worth listening to.

* * *

Author's Note: This is the first chapter of a story I'm gong to continue as soon as time and inspiration allow. It will probably be only a few chapters long.


End file.
